De Angelis on top in MotoGP warm up

Alex de Angelis was the surprise pace setter with a late best effort in the MotoGP warm up session at Indianapolis.

Sunday morning’s warm up outings at the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix concluded with Alex de Angelis causing a surprise with a 1’40.446 hot lap to top the timesheet, ahead of pole man Dani Pedrosa.

The satellite Honda rider outdid his factory counterpart by just 0.04s on his San Carlo Honda Gresini machine on the last of his 12 laps.

Behind the Honda pair by approximately three tenths of a second, Fiat Yamaha’s Jorge Lorenzo and Valentino Rossi lapped in a similar pace to each other on their M1 machines, in third and fourth places respectively.

The business end of the timesheet also featured De Angelis’ team-mate Toni Elías, Americans Nicky Hayden (Ducati) and Colin Edwards (Monster Yamaha Tech 3) and Italian rider Marco Melandri (Hayate Racing) – who was almost 1.09s down on De Angelis’ pace.

There was an inconsequential crash for Pramac Racing’s Niccolò Canepa at the end of the session, but he nonetheless placed 12th fastest.